


take me home to my heart

by orphan_account



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-27
Updated: 2012-10-27
Packaged: 2017-11-17 03:53:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/547338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It takes months to fix what was once easier than breathing,</p>
            </blockquote>





	take me home to my heart

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the first fic challenge on the mattkazstrophe tumblr. Prompts: panda, frank sinatra, greeting card, kleenex, ipod earbuds, minibar, sombrero, new furniture, sand, pasta sauce.

**1.** **panda**

He flies out to New York halfway through her run – it’s the Jubilee Weekend, and they’ve all been given four days off  _Doctor Who_  – but doesn’t tell her; simply slides into his seat and watches her  _act_. He thinks she catches his eye just before the interval, but can’t be sure; he hopes so, though.

After the show – his hands still sore from clapping, his head still spinning from  _Karen_  – he makes his way to the stage door and begs entry. He’s in luck, the stage hand on the door watches  _Doctor Who_ and doesn’t even ask for an explanation, just points him in the direction of Dressing Room Five. “Ms Gillan will be with you shortly, sir, shall I tell her you’ve arrived?”

His feet carry him all the way to the door of the dressing room, and then he pauses; somehow, there’s a tension running through him that he can’t quite place.

The smell of saw dust and stage make-up and burnt-out flood lights is overpoweringly strong – Karen’s dressing room is closest-but-one to the stage – and he’s thrown back to last September, when he saw her in London. She had just one long scene then, and a dressing room so far removed from the stage it was perfectly safe for him to spend the whole evening curled up in her chair and waiting for her to finish. When Arthur came down to see it, they went out and got  _ridiculously_ hammered in a tiny club that apparently only Arthur had ever heard of, and once or twice they went for drinks with the rest of the cast, and when Steven, Beth, and Piers turned up in force they all went for lunch together the next day; but the best nights were when it was just her and him. They shared countless Chinese take-aways on the steps of the National Gallery at eleven at night,  the shadowy figures of the four lions and Nelson’s Column lit up by the orange haze of the London skyline, talking and laughing and arguing and setting the world to rights, one meandering conversation at a time.

Christ. He hasn’t seen her in  _over a month_ , he realises with a shock; first she was in Cannes, then he was back at work, and now she’s been in New York for the past fortnight – there just hasn’t been time.

They should have made time, he thinks. They  _should_  have. They said, they promised, they  _swore_  they wouldn’t drift apart – and now it’s been over a month. Suddenly, Matt’s terrified. She won’t want to see him, not like this, not as a surprise – it’s been too long – but he’s come this far, he may as well knock. He raises his hand to knock, and the door flies open.

“ _Fucksake,_ Matthew-“

And then she’s hugging him so tightly he may have stopped breathing at one point, and he realises he’s crying into her hair, and her body is shaking with what could be laughter but might be sobs.

-

She talks non-stop while she finishes getting dressed and takes her stage make-up off, while he perches on a pile of magazines and just watches her move.  He laughs, suddenly, and she turns to him with a questioning kind of look.

“What?”

“You look like a panda,” he tells her, crossing the tiny space and taking the sponge out of her hands to dab at the smudge around her eyes. “A gangly, beautiful, panda.”

**2.** **frank sinatra**

Karen has a matinee the next day, so they can’t go out; but Matt insists on getting a bottle of champagne and a CD of ‘proper American music’ so they can celebrate in style back at her hotel. She laughs at him, but lets him stick the CD on anyway – and after three glasses of champagne each, he catches her hand and waltzes her around the room, crooning – badly - in her ear.

“Are you happy now?” Karen asks, breathless, when they come to a stop; they’re not so much dancing as swaying on the spot now, and Matt’s head is buzzing with the bubbles and with the closeness of her, and he thinks he might be about to say something stupid –

“Course I am!” He beams instead, pulling himself away from her to look her properly in the eye. “New York, Sinatra, champagne,  _you_  – all my favourite things.”

Karen smiles, and pulls him down to sit on her bed. “I missed you,” she confesses after a moment of simply resting her head on his shoulders. “Let’s never let it go this long again, okay?”

“Yeah,” he breathes , letting an arm loop around her side and pulling her close. “I promise.”

**3.** **greeting card**

Except then, suddenly, it’s been another five months, and he isn’t quite sure how that could have happened, but it has.

The stark realisation comes on his birthday, when he starts sifting through the pile of cards that has gradually been trickling in over the last couple of days, and finds an envelope marked in her distinctive scribble.

His heart stops for an instant, and he forces his fingers to remain calm as he rips open the envelope, pulls out the card, and opens it to read the message.

_Happy Birthday Matt! Jesus, the big Three Oh…you’re getting old, mister!!! Well, there’s a cheery thought for you, sorry about that….Nah, not really, you deserve to hear the truth. Much love! Kazza xxx_

The rest of the day is soured, and there is something sharp and acrid burning at the back of everything Matt says or thinks; this is the first birthday in four years that he hasn’t spent on set with Karen.

**4.** **kleenex**

Embarrassingly, he cries when Steven phones him with the news.

They’ve written Amy back in.

Karen is coming back.

Not for long, it’ll only be a day or two of filming – him and Jenna and Karen on the TARDIS set – it’s one of a series of dream sequences that are linked together for the 50th; but when Matt puts down the phone, it may as well be a full series with Karen for all he cares. He sits on the sofa, practically immobile,  for a good half hour, picking up a fresh Kleenex every now and then to dab somewhat inefficiently at his eyes. They’re going to be working together again, she’ll be up in Cardiff again,  _finally_ they’ll be able to close the strange gap that has opened between them. Finally, they can get back to the way they used to be.

**5.** **IPod earbuds**

Except the read-through is possibly one of the worst experiences of Matt’s life.

Karen hugs him briefly when she arrives, and then she moves away to say hello to Caro and Steven, and introduce herself to Jenna with an impeccably friendly tone of voice, and then suddenly they’ve started the read-through and he still hasn’t said so much as two full sentences to her.

When they stop for tea and biscuits, she pushes her chair back and reaches for her iPod. Shuts herself off from the world.

He wants to go and speak to her, he  _does,_  but – but – but she doesn’t want him to, he realises with a feeling that feels like falling somewhere in the pit of his stomach. She doesn’t want him to.

So he turns away briskly, and chats to Jenna about the scenes they filmed last week, and whether the CGI will match up to what they’ve been imagining – and out of the corner of his eye, he can see that Karen isn’t watching him, isn’t even aware of anything, is just staring down at her iPod screen.  She’s walled herself off from with much more than just the iPod, he knows, but somehow it’s the sight of the earbuds, framed by her poker-straight hair and the creamy palette that is her skin, and the clear signal they send out – leave me alone, I don’t feel like talking to anyone in particular, I’m just here for the job – that forces him to look away.

And that’s the way it is, for the rest of the day.

**6.** **minibar**

By the end of the day, Matt feels like he’s screaming and no one can hear. He has to make this right; has to at least  _try_.

“Karen!” He sprints after her, grabbing her by the arm and spinning her round to face him.

She arches an eyebrow but says nothing.

“I – “ Words fail him for a moment, but he ploughs on because if he doesn’t, she’s going to leave again. “Want to go for a drink?”

Her expression softens, just fractionally. “I had a long drive up from London, I’m pretty tired,” she tells him, and his hopes shatter. “Back to mine? There’s a decent mini-bar, and it’s nice and quiet.”

Hope – fragile, tiny, but definitely  _there_  – takes hold of him again, and they share a cab to her hotel.

-

When they arrive, Karen offers him a beer from the fridge, and everything –  _everything –_ is wrong. They shouldn’t be here, he realises. They shouldn’t be at some faceless, nameless, hotel in the centre of Cardiff. They should be at his flat, curled up on his sofa like they used to be almost every other night, surrounded by empty take-away cartons and bottles of beer, sprawled out and watching TV or a film or YouTube videos…. For that matter, the very idea of Karen getting a hotel room for a week is absurd; last year, when the flat below him got trashed and Matt had to move out for a fortnight, there wasn’t any question that he would move in with Karen.

That was last year though, when things were easy; but Matt thinks maybe they can get there again, and resolves to start right away.

“Tell me about your life, then,” he prompts, clinking his bottle against hers. “All the gossip! I want to know  _everything_ , Kaz.”

She laughs distractedly, “I’ve been busy, I guess. The play and the film, and then I went home for a bit to see my mum and dad. And…yeah, just generally hanging round London, I guess. Couple of auditions, couple of meetings. Catching up with old friends. Nothing special, really.”

To hear her life run by him like that – almost six months of events that he’s had nothing to do with – hurts. Hurts in a way he didn’t think was possible.

“But enough about me!” Karen brushes the moment aside, and hurries on. “My life is boring right now. What about you? How’s it been? Filming, I mean? And Jenna, do you get on with her? I mean, it looked like you get on well enough today, so that’s good, and-“

“Kaz.” Matt stops her with one word, and looks her straight in the eye.  _No_. No, that can’t be what this is about, he would have  _known_ , he wound have been able to  _tell_  – “Jenna’s – Jenna’s cool. I like her, a lot, I’m glad to have someone like her to be working with.”

“Well, that’s good-“ Already, Karen is shifting ever-so-slightly away from him on the sofa, her face blankly encouraging.

“No, listen, Kaz – shit. Karen. Jenna’s not you. I miss you. I miss you every single day, I miss having you around on set and I miss hanging out with you after work, and I miss just being able to pick up the phone and _talk_ to you, and no matter how much I’m okay with working with Jenna, it’s not – it’s not the same.”

He stares at her, one hand gripping hers; he  _has_ to make her see. “Sorry,” he says; for what, he isn’t sure. Finally, she smiles, shakes her head a little jerkily

“Nothing to apologise for, stupid,” she mumbles into her bottle, and a little bit of the ice between them begins to melt away.

**7.** **sombrero**

Slowly, piece by piece and with more than a little difficulty, they start to rebuild what was once easier than breathing.

The two days she spends on set are  _wonderful_ preciselybecause they’re so normal, and at the shooting block wrap party they spend all evening talking, dancing, laughing, hugging, maybe crying a little. Then she’s gone, back home to London, and a flurry of daily texts, weekly phone calls, regular emails with links to pictures or videos he thinks she might find funny, follows.

Still, it’s a good month before he can actually get away to see her. Arthur’s invitation arrives in the form of a group text, and another one to Matt alone swiftly follows;  **I checked with Steven, you definitely have the 23 rd off. No excuses, mate _._**

Matt has to laugh at that, and replies immediately, reassuring Arthur that he was never even _considering_ not coming to the Great Darvill Christmas Piss-Up; the very next text he sends is to Karen, asking her if he can crash at hers.

-

“Oh my god, you have to help me.”

“Hello to you, too.”

“Yeah, hi, come in-“ Karen ushers him inside quickly; she’s still in her pyjamas, and her hair is piled messily up into a sort of ponytail, and Matt is so happy to see her he thinks his heart might burst. Still, he follows her into the living room tamely enough, and sets down his overnight bag before pulling her into a tight hug.

“Hello,” he repeats, more firmly this time, spinning her around in an erratic circle.

“Yeah,  _hi_ , Matt, now listen-“ she shoves him away but grins so genuinely that he knows she doesn’t mean it –“What kind of  _sadist_  organises a _Beach Party_ themed Christmas do?”

“A sadist named Arthur?”

“Ugh!” Karen throws up her hands in outrage. “He  _knows_  I’m halfway through moving house, all my clothes that I don’t need right now are packed up in boxes, how the  _fuck_  am I supposed to find something  _summery_  to wear?”

They spend the afternoon trawling through the vintage shops off Camden Lock, stopping halfway through for burritos and chocolate-covered strawberries, and Matt thinks he hasn’t laughed this much or this hard since New York.

They eventually find the perfect buy – two sombreros in garishly bright yellow, red, and green – and  when Karen decides to go all-out and buy a swimsuit and a sarong to wear under her coat,  but only if Matt goes in trunks, he neglects to mention that he actually packed a tame Hawaiian-shirt-and-slacks combo; he’d rather match Karen, anyway.

**8.** **new furniture**

The next time he sees her, sleeting January rain follows him all the way from the tube station, and by the time he arrives at the new flat – it doesn’t help that he got lost several times on the way – Matt is freezing cold and soaked to the bone.

“Oh, god, look at you!” She pulls him inside quickly, and Matt almost cries with relief as a blast of hot air from the radiator washes over him. “Why are you  _holding your coat,_ Matt, you plonker?”

“Because I didn’t want this –“ He pulls the coat away with a flourish – “To get wet.”

Karen stares at the horribly kitsch lamp for a few too many seconds, and for a moment Matt is scared she won’t like it; then she’s laughing helplessly.

“Oh my god, it’s hideous, I love it!” She hugs him, wet as he is, and still can’t stop laughing by the time she pulls away.

“House-warming present,” he grins, shrugging his shoulders.

“I’ll put it…in the bedroom,” Karen decides, plucking it from his hands and pulling on his sleeve. “There’s a random chair I decided to put in the corner that horribly clashes with the rest of the flat, this’ll feel right at home.”

“Karen,” Matt told her, deadly serious, following her down the hall. “Everything in your flat clashes. You have about as much sense of interior design as a fish.”

“Yeah, shut up.”

“Never.”

**9.** **Sand**

The sand is soft and warm under his toes the day he kisses her, the hot July sun beating down on their backs.

When he pulls away, she slaps him; his hand flies to his cheek, and he looks at her with a strange mixture of wanting to laugh and being absolutely terrified; but Karen is smiling, her eyes filled with tears.

“Why now?” she asks finally, staring at her feet.

“Because you’re gorgeous. Because the sun made me light-headed. Because I’ve got a hangover and it seemed like a good idea. Because we’re friends again.”

Their second kiss takes him by surprise just as much as the first one surprised her; he thinks he might be rubbish at this after all, because  _oh Jesus Christ this is Karen_ and it’s all he can not to wave his arms madly in the air; they come up to skim across her hips instead, and she sighs into his mouth.

_Because I love you_ goes unsaid for now, but not for long.

**10.** **pasta sauce**

He likes tortellini from a packet and tomato sauce from a jar when he comes home late from filming; she prefers cracking some eggs and milk together and making an impromptu carbonara.

They compromise, taking turns and learning together. They learn to make it work.

And it does. 


End file.
